Transport 2_The Flood

by Phillip P. Peterson

  A wave of voices cascaded through the mess room. Marlene stared at Dr. Dressel. She hadn’t reckoned with this. She had been under the firm belief that there was no way back. And now, suddenly, all was not lost after all. That changed the situation—fundamentally.

  “Okay,” she said. “That offers us a glimmer of hope that we can think about later. Nonetheless, we have to decide what our next step is. Clearly we have only two options: either we give free rein to our desire for revenge and execute Mr. Harris and Mr. Holbrook for treason. Or we accept their offer, join the other group and set up a colony on their planet, in order to hold out for as long as it takes to find a way back to Earth.” Or not. “Does anybody have another suggestion?”

  She looked around the room expectantly. There was some whispering going on. Neaman and Ott, in particular, were engaged in a quiet but heated discussion. She waited a few more seconds before continuing. “Alright. We’ll take a break now. Take the time to talk things through with the others and then we’ll put it to a vote.”

  Chapter 4

  “Come on Russell, wake up!

  The voice droned through Russell’s subconscious. It weaved in and out of a dream about canyon walls closing in on each other and a vision of rising, blood-red water. He was trying to keep afloat, but the water was tossing him against the jagged cliff-face. He gasped for air as again and again he was pushed under the surface by the strong current. With now bloody hands he finally managed to cling onto a rocky outcrop and start to pull himself out. Behind him, he could hear a loud hissing noise and turned his head. Panic welled up as he saw a pack of greenish-gray monsters with open mouths and razor-sharp teeth coming toward him. He had to get away from here!

  “Russell. You’ve got to wake up! Can you hear me?”

  When the first of the monsters had almost reached him, the sun suddenly broke through a gap in the clouds. He was dazzled by the rays and blinked. One of the monsters had reached him, his gaping bloodthirsty mouth right in front of his face. Strangely, Russell didn’t feel any fear. Why did everything look so fuzzy? He closed his eyes and opened them again. He blinked helplessly, until the image came back into focus. The monster was changing into Dr. Lindwall. The tip of a toothpick was sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Finally! Look at me, Russell. Can you hear me?”

  Russell nodded. He had a throbbing headache. The light came, of course, from the bright neon lights of the infirmary. He closed his eyes for a few moments until the headache was more bearable.

  “Yes Doctor. I can hear you. What happened?”

  A second face now swam into view. Russell was relieved to see his wife, Ellen. He had been dreaming, that much he knew. But how had he got here, and why? He simply could not remember. Ellen stroked him gently on the cheek and smiled. “You passed out. They brought you to the infirmary.” Her voice was trembling slightly; it always trembled when she was worried.

  “They?” Russell had no idea who she was talking about.

  “Marlene and Drew. You were in the canyon. Half-way along the road back from the observation post. Can you remember?

  The events of the day slowly came back to him. He had been at the observation post with Marlene. Then they had been attacked by snipers. Images from the battle danced before his eyes. Then the return journey through the canyon where they had come across Drew. The scientist had told them she’d found out something about the geology of the canyon. Then everything had gone black. He must have passed out.

  “Must have been my blood pressure. Right, Doc?”

  Lindwall looked at him critically. “Your wife told me you haven’t been feeling too great these last days and weeks.”

  “Perhaps a little weaker and more tired than usual. Must be this cold I can’t seem to shake off,” said Russell. He didn’t like to talk about it. Yes, he had been feeling under the weather recently, but not really ill. He didn’t want to be an old wuss.

  “You had a bad flu?” Lindwall scrutinized Russell skeptically. It wasn’t impossible, since they had brought influenza viruses with them from Earth and there had been some serious flu epidemics, but one-off cases were almost unheard of, and due to the size of the colony—forty adults and as many children—Lindwall was generally well informed.

  “Okay, not flu. A bad cold that’s dragging on,” replied Russell.

  “What are your symptoms?”

  “It started with a sore throat, which turned into a slight cough that won’t go away.”

  “Combined with tiredness and feeling generally under the weather.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Hmmm.” Lindwall scratched his chin. “A protracted case of flu is possible, but unlikely. It would have had to turn into pneumonia to cause a circulatory collapse, and you’d have a fever and your phlegm would look different. Are you sweating at night?”

  “Well, a little perhaps,” said Russell, reluctantly. He wanted to get out of here. He didn’t understand why the doctor was making such a fuss. He was getting old, that was all.

  “Liar!” said Ellen gently but firmly. She stroked his back. “The last few weeks you were often soaked in sweat in the morning.”

  “But it’s been pretty warm lately!”

  “Well. . . . ” said Dr. Lindwall.

  “Now what?” asked Russell. “Are you going to do a blood test to find out what the problem is?”

  “I already took some blood while you were unconscious. I’ll check it out this evening. The automatic blood testing equipment has given up the ghost completely. Like so many things here.” Lindwall spat the chewed-up toothpick, which he’d had in his mouth the whole time, in the direction of the trash can, but missed. He took another toothpick out of a little box and stuck it in his mouth absentmindedly. After twenty years on this new planet, the doctor still missed his beloved cigarettes.

  “So I can go now?” asked Russell.

  “I’d like to take an upper-body X-ray.”

  “I thought the X-ray machine had also given up the ghost,” said Ellen.

  “The machine was okay, I just didn’t have any photographic plates anymore.” He shrugged. “Dr. Dressel has found a way of improvising some replacement plates for me.”

  “How?” asked Russell, as he took off his shirt and walked over to the narrow X-ray cabin.

  The gaunt doctor followed him, took a plate out of a container and slid it into the machine. “He coated glass plates with a silver-bromide emulsion.”

  “Silver bromide?”

  Lindwall shrugged again. “Reacts with the X-rays. Our biologist had a canister of it in her lab. When it’s run out, that’ll be the end of X-raying for the time being. Over the coming years, we’re going to have to say goodbye to a lot of the comforts and conveniences we’re used to.” The doctor furrowed his brow.

  “I’m sorry if you’d rather be somewhere else,” said Russell quietly. Even after all these years, he still had the feeling he had to justify himself.

  Dr. Lindwall flicked a switch on the X-ray machine. “S’okay. The decision to destroy the transporter on Mars was reached democratically. I voted against it, but maybe it’s a good thing humanity has no more access to this technology if it’s as dangerous as Dr. Dressel says it is. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m never returning to Earth, but sometimes I wonder what kind of world our children are growing up in.” He pointed out of the narrow window. “The nuclear reactor over there will be able to provide us with some of our energy even fifty years from now. But we’ll have to plough our fields by hand when the jeeps are beyond repair in a few years’ time. We don’t even have horses or cows we can use, because there simply aren’t any comparable animals here. We have a very peculiar mix of modern technology and medieval methods. And at the rate our equipment is falling apart, I would say we’re sliding increasingly back toward the Middle Ages.”

  “Our engineers are already working on a tractor that could work with the combustion engine they created. We have oil, and if our children show in
itiative, they’ll be living in a modern, digital society again within a few generations.”

  Lindwall laughed quietly. “You don’t seriously believe that, do you? How many children do we have? The generation born here consists of forty children. The next generation, our grandchildren, might consist of around a hundred people: far too few for a modern, digital society. A modern chip factory needs—how many . . . a thousand?—in any case a great many workers that we simply don’t have. The next few generations will have a universal education at their disposal. But we won’t be able to go down the route of detailed specialization, which is necessary for modern technical achievement. Our level of development will be frozen at the level of the early twentieth-century for a long time, probably for hundreds of years. At the moment, our kids still have the luxury of accessing human knowledge using computers, but they won’t last forever, either. At some point they will have to start developing everything themselves. And there isn’t enough paper on this planet to even write down even the most basic knowledge. It will be a miracle if the society of our grandchildren doesn’t revert to medieval barbarianism.”

  “Isn’t that a very pessimistic view?” asked Russell.

  “I also think we can trust our children and grandchildren to be more farsighted,” added Ellen.

  The doctor snorted. “War follows peace, creativity follows destruction, death follows life. We shouldn’t believe that we are above this just because we left our home planet.”

  He took Ellen gently by the arm and pushed her out of the little room. He turned to Russell. “Take a deep breath and then hold it until I tell you.”

  Russell breathed in and stayed as calm as he could as the doctor locked the door.

  There was a loud clicking noise and the X-ray was lying in the box.

  Chapter 5

  “Ben, is that you?” asked Drew, as she heard the squeaking of the front door.

  This was followed by the familiar shuffling sound of Ben’s footsteps, which answered her question and meant she didn’t have to look up from her microscope. She had set up a little workspace in their hut, so she could work outside of the laboratory if she needed to. Right now, the geologist was busy with the stone samples that she had collected in the canyon.

  Ben was usually busy with his own stuff, and they didn’t do much together anymore, either inside or outside the house. The fact that her husband hadn’t greeted her when he came in meant he was in a bad mood again.

  “Where are the kids?” she heard Ben’s voice from behind her. As usual, it was devoid of any emotion. After all these years, she still couldn’t tell from the tone of this voice if he was happy, bored, concerned, or angry.

  “Catherine is with Jimmy Harris and Dana is on duty on the fields today. How was your day?”

  He husband didn’t answer.

  Drew turned around. Ben was standing there with folded arms. She turned off the light on the microscope and stood up.

  Without warning, Ben’s hand struck her in the face. “Clearly you’ve lost your mind,” her husband said calmly.

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly. What had she done wrong this time?

  “What were you thinking?” Ben grabbed her roughly by the arm.

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about!” she shouted at him.

  He hit her again. Drew tasted blood.

  “You will never shout at me again. Never! Do you understand?” His tone of voice had not changed one iota since the beginning of the conversation. “I asked you if you understood me,” Ben said menacingly.

  Drew was whimpering with pain. “Yes! Yes!” she said hoarsely. “I understand!”

  Ben let go of her arm. “What were you doing alone in the pass?”

  “I was collecting stones.” She simply did not understand why he was so angry. “The geology in the lower part of the canyon is completely different from—”

  “I don’t care about your stupid stones,” said Ben. “But I don’t like to have my wife found crawling around on the ground by Russell Harris and Marlene Wolfe.”

  So that was what this was about.

  “The men were laughing about it. Do you know how it makes me look? Do you have any idea?”

  She looked down at the ground as she couldn’t bear the force of his gaze anymore. “How could I have known that Russell and Marlene would be coming around the bend? I didn’t even hear their jeep,” she whispered.

  “I don’t care!” said Ben. “I just don’t want it ever to happen again, or there’ll be a price to pay!”

  Drew nodded slowly.

  “Say it!”

  Drew lifted her head, but was still unable to look him in the eyes.

  “I will never do it again,” she whispered.

  Ben held her in a vice for a few more seconds and nodded. “Okay, we’ve got that sorted. I also don’t want Cathy to continue meeting Jim Harris. Tell your daughter, or I’ll have to do it.”

  Drew sobbed. “Yes, okay. I’ll tell her.”

  Without another word, Ben turned around and disappeared out of the door before Drew sunk back into her seat. She sniffed, and tears ran down her cheeks.

  Ben hated Russell. Still, after all these years. Drew tried to think back to the days when they had been happy together. They had gotten to know each other over twenty years ago during a mission in Afghanistan. It had been a peacekeeping mission. Ben and his team had built a bridge and Drew had been called in as a geologist to analyze the difficult substrates. Ben was the deputy company commander, sharp as a tack, and looking forward to leading his first mission. She fell in love with him at first sight. Despite his sometimes macho behavior, he could be very attentive and, compared to the other soldiers, he seemed genuinely interested in his work. They had just rented themselves an apartment together outside the base when they received the command for the fateful mission with the transporter.

  Being stranded here had ruined Ben’s career plan of becoming a company commander. When Marlene had disbanded the company and turned it into an informal militia that had more in common with the National Guard than with a specialized volunteer army, Ben didn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He had never felt at home on New California, nor had he found a task to fulfill him. He was a military officer, after all, and not a technician, mechanic, or engineer, like many others from his company. The fact that Drew greatly enjoyed studying the geological peculiarities of their new home didn’t make things easier for their relationship. As the years passed, he increasingly vented his frustration in violent outbursts. The first time he hit her, she had wanted to leave him then and there. But he had begged for forgiveness, and she had relented for the sake of the children.

  From then on, his meltdowns became more frequent, and now she had come to the realization that she no longer had the strength to leave him. At least Ben didn’t hit the girls. At least she hoped not.

  Chapter 6

  Russell was out of breath and coughing as he flung open the door to his hut. He was feeling dizzy, and the scratchy feeling in his throat wasn’t getting better.

  “Where were you?” asked Ellen, who was busy at the hearth. They used the open fireplace for heating and cooking. There were no fitted kitchens on this planet.

  But a few years ago they had at least managed to produce glass, which meant the log cabins now let in more light. In the past, they had spanned pieces of leather across the windows. It was a simple life, but they had everything they needed. Russell didn’t miss the trappings of modern civilization. He could survive perfectly well without a TV, telephone, computer, Internet, car and newspapers. In fact, he liked the fact that life here was focused on the essentials. Ellen felt the same way.

  “I was at Chris’s,” said Russell.

  “Chris Neaman?”

  “Christian Holbrook,” he replied. “I helped him to patch up his roof.” He coughed again.

  Ellen put down the wire brush, with which she had been removing the soot from cracks between the stones. “Dr. Dressel said
you need to take care of yourself. You look really unwell again and your coughing hasn’t got any better.”

  Russell raised his arms helplessly. “I can’t just sit around the whole day.”

  Ellen came up to him, gave him a kiss and stroked his cheek. “Nobody said you had to sit around. But you also don’t have to climb around roofs with Chris. What would happen if you passed out up there?”

  “I guess I’d fall down,” replied Russell drily.

  “Has the doc finally been in touch?”

  “No, he said he’d come over once he’s analyzed the blood sample and the X-ray. I don’t reckon it’ll be today.”

  “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  He could tell from his wife’s tone of voice that his collapse in the canyon had alarmed her. He couldn’t blame her; after all, over all the years he had never been ill. He wasn’t too worried himself. He had never been one to take it easy, and he rushed around all over the colony whenever he was needed. Somehow there was always something to do, whether it was mending a roof or building a new hut. He had also never had a problem with doing fieldwork. He enjoyed the exercise. He was just getting older, that was the problem. He would have to slow down a bit, then everything would be okay.

  “Nonsense!” replied Russell. “It’s probably just a mild case of pneumonia. I’ll get some antibiotics, and in a few days I’ll be back to normal.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Russell had hardly sat down on a chair, when the door crashed open and Greg came tumbling into the room. The boy had too much energy, thought Russell with a smile. But I was no different at his age.

  The youngest of their three children was now eight years old. Greg ran straight to his father and stood in front of him, legs apart, hands on his hips. “Hey, Dad, Courtney said that on Earth there are houses as big as giant redwoods. And that more people fit inside than in the whole world.” With “world” he of course meant New California, their colony. “Dimitri and I just laughed at them. They were lying weren’t they, Dad?”